


and small tales hang thereto

by vardasvapors (cynewulf)



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dagor Bragollach, Don't Try This At Home, Ent Yavanna, Epistolary, Eregion, Fall of Gondolin, Famous Inventors, Ficlet Collection, Helcaraxë, Internal Monologue, Númenor, Prehistoric Culture, The Great Journey, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, gratuitous gilgamesh references, immortality problems, the noldor can't stop won't stop, unsafe surgery, weird ainur brains
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-03-20 05:45:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13711107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynewulf/pseuds/vardasvapors
Summary: A collection of my tumblr shortfic, mostly from ask memes. Updated sporadically!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> These fics were initially posted here on my tumblr, all unrelated, and vary a great deal in tone and content. Enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Voronwë for the prompt: _a bad memory that still haunts them_ , originally requested by erotetica on [tumblr](http://vardasvapors.tumblr.com/post/168648014159/and-voronwe)

“Only one? I do not know if it is one, it is many ragged fragments of horrors as varied as the moods of the sea, clinging together at their edges. When Gondolin fell I had no eyes for it, for I was looking for nothing but golden hair in the slaughter and smoke, and anything that was not golden hair was grey and fogged out. But I neglected to shut off my ears, so when I remember the moment Tuor appeared, finally, with Idril and Eärendil in his arms, ashen as a ghost from the fall of the city’s white dust like snow, I cannot remember his words, but only layers of screams, circling further and further out. Another, and another, and another.

I remember we were late in escaping down the tunnel I had helped make, and at one deep and narrow part with the least air, there was hardly a patch of ground that was not covered in bodies. It was too dark to see them, too close to avoid them - we trod on them all the way through the dark way, I remember that some were warriors who were sturdy under our feet in their armor, or ground to meat and splintered bone in their mail, or civilians soft and unprotected from the trampling boots, and slippery with blood. They had all blended together there, I would not look down. Tuor was before me, Tuor who was dear was alive for this moment, perhaps a moment more, a moment more, and yet a moment more, before he joined them. That was all I knew.

I smelled the sea long before I knew I had. I did not realize it was the sea of the real world, and not of my mind. I thought I only smelled it because the march, dazed and dragging down with despair and weariness, was rolling over me much like the sea’s depths, cold-hating, merciless, pressing into my mouth and eyes and ears, that had near drowned me years before. Idril and Tuor were at the front of the line, pulling us forward, forward, by dint of trust and threats and mindless resolve, and entrusted me with Eärendil. He had sunk in delirium and did not see my face or hear my voice, his face and hands grey and dry as parchment skins, and his tiny feet tapping limp against my arm with each step. All the curls on his head were still gold and fine as only a child’s can be, though his face was pinched as an old man’s. He would be an old man, I thought, with every step, the steps like swimming strokes upon the surface of the sea, the steps growing into hours, and the hours into days untold. Until I finally caught the scent of the sea, I let that thought push me forward. He would be an old man, I would have enough steps and hours and days, to reach the day he would be an old man, I thought, and did not drown.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Galadriel for the prompt: _"a story about their family/home life."_ Originally written on [tumblr](http://vardasvapors.tumblr.com/post/168731992194/for-galadriel-but-only-if-you-feel-like-it) for [simaetha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simaetha)

“With so nimble a mind, Estel, there is little doubt that you shall win great favor by picking gifts as apt as this one for your future allies. It has been long since I have seen the bright berries and dark leaves of Eregion, the Land of Holly. I had heard they had nearly died out in that land, fading, like many things.

Will I remember? They were my daughter’s delight, in her childhood when the first stones of Ost-in-Edhil were laid amid our cottages in the wilds before the gate of Khazad-dum of old. She loved them because they were bright even in the dark of winter, and under the snow. Fitting, for her! But no doubt you have heard many a tale of her in your old home. But I remember clearest when she was still mine. My husband and I do not sit remembering often, now. Happy! Too happy and too busy to dwell unduly upon what was lost to me, my brothers, my cousins, my teacher. Each day different from the last, each day my lord and I began a new work, each day the stones of our towers reached higher, each day our daughter brought us some new pleasure of parenthood that we could not have imagined, and our family and home and people grew together all at once. Do you know what delight it is to build a home of your own? Perhaps you shall, in the north kingdom: my granddaughter must know it in her span of time.

Time! Time was different then. How fast did my daughter grow! How fast our city! Our works, and our arts! How busy was my family! Curious – things changed so much, so fast that the time never dragged, yet never did it slip by unnoticed as it does now. So much was done that the time seemed much more full than it seems now, yet it weighed one down so little. Curious – that the holly remains little changed all the year, yet in my memory never does it seem to stand so still as the falling golden leaves.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> originally [here](http://vardasvapors.tumblr.com/post/159647142574/elros-elrond-2am-chatlog-athrabeth-for-dummies) on tumblr as a joke, partly in reference to [this post](http://vardasvapors.tumblr.com/post/158941575299/thunderstruck9-w%C5%82adys%C5%82aw-podkowi%C5%84ski-polish)

## elros & elrond 2am chatlog: “athrabeth for dummies part #233″

**notdeadmanwalking** reblogged this chat from **shallinherittheearth** : 

**Lordly One:** idk it’s just very comforting to feel all the arthritic stuff in the shoulders rather than some random pointless place  


**Lordly One:** i mean it’s such a relief you know? like ‘ok you did 480 years of sailing and building good job the bones were meant to last exactly 480 years and you used it up right on time’ or something. very relaxing

**Grown Up Child:** you did something to show for it. a good memory.   


**Lordly One:** unlike arthritis of like

**Grown Up Child:** the ass

**Lordly One:** the ass

**Lordly One:** i said it first my fingers are old too  


**Grown Up Child:** yeah arthritis of the ass would be like

**Lordly One:** like what’s the point. what kind of a story would that be.  


**Grown Up Child:** glad you asked

**Lordly One:** no

**Grown Up Child:** you could always be proud of how many days u spent sitting on your ass doing your royal paperwork. for great justice. and the future of mankind.  


**Lordly One:** too bad YOUR hroa doesn’t wear out like this so you can’t, say, be proud of how all your teeth fell out from putting your foot in your mouth 8376537 times with that thing with the guy in the forest by the river or whatever it was.  


**Grown Up Child:** actually. you know what. i get that. i thought of a thing like that about humans

**Lordly One:** ………‘thought’  


**Grown Up Child:** yes. i ’’’’’thought’’’’’ it would be really great to have a face where someone can look @ you and immediately go ‘oh right this guy spent 80% of his time smiling because look at the creases’ and it’s not even like ‘time so far’ but just. the majority of the accumulation of ur character drawn in wrinkles.  


**Grown Up Child:** it wouldn’t work for immortal ppl though. our faces would just look like a giant scribble after like 2000 years prob and then fall off. since there is no endpoint we gotta just, keep making it up as we go. keeping adding more memories and more actions and more people into the character, another chance, another meeting, etc etc etc  


**Lordly One:** i know u keep saying the memories buoy up instead of weigh down  


**Grown Up Child:** like a treasure hoard. depends on the treasure.  


**Lordly One:** i’m too old for that shit. sounds like a nightmare

**Grown Up Child:** it’s the dream tbh. i know u keep saying too much of a good thing. overstayed parties right?  


**Lordly One:** the thing about mortality is that it’s not necessarily about the majority of our time like you said. you can spend your whole life doing x but if you end it a certain way you can reform the shape of your whole life around the end and then, shut the lid. case closed. that’s the final say, the final epitaph. it’s bounded on both ends, and makes room for the next thing. and then you don’t have to worry about it anymore, because there’s nothing you can do about it anyway. you can move on to, you know….the Outside.  


**Grown Up Child:** i’ll remember it. we can compare stories after the world ends.  


**Grown Up Child:** i mean no kidding here that does already sound like the most relaxing thing ever but otoh…..the opportunity to keep eavesdropping on the future. wouldn't pass that up for anything. i'll get there sometime.  


**Lordly One:** what you mean your head is empty enough to need eternity to fill it? i’d never have guessed!  


**Grown Up Child:** yeah sure whatever. *I* always did guess you don’t want to ruin your perfectly aged face that aged right on time. it’s too good of a story. i have to stick around to tell it to everyone else about a billion times. ‘and he lived happily ever after until the moment his good looks disappeared, but no longer. that’s the important part.’  


**Lordly One:** lbr at least something about me will be frozen in time, aka as the better-looking twin and you just have to deal with this fact hanging over your head until the end of the world. but beauty should be less important to humans bc humans think youth is the most beautiful thing. and that's a moot point in a couple hundred years.   


**Lordly One:** also as a society numenor has moved past all those fleeting surfaces.  


**Grown Up Child:** oh right! i always forget.

**Grown Up Child:** hey btw this wouldn’t by any chance have something to do with that time you asked me to get rid of your ear points and every time i tried you screamed DON’T MAKE ME LOPSIDED FOR LIFE until i gave you 5 shots of that haladin stuff and just used the meat cleaver

**Lordly One:** ……….no that was a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT thing

**Lordly One:** you used a MEAT CL

**Lordly One:** actually forget it i don’t want to know  


**Grown Up Child:** dkglfkhfaajaxerkldl

**Lordly One:** and also if you tell anyone about that i will tell everyone about how you straight-up asked eonwe if being immortal meant you’d always look that good  


**Grown Up Child:** ………you wouldn’t

#he did #elros tag  



	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written [on tumblr](http://vardasvapors.tumblr.com/post/168913103469/miriel) for the prompt: Miriel + _"a good memory that makes them smile"_

“Oh, well you will think I am bragging, but very happy it was. Do you know the relief of warmth that comes with the lighting of a fire in the woods under the stars? ‘Twas a far greater relief on the Great Journey after the Cracking – that was what we called the wars in the north that broke the land when Cuivienen was lost, before we knew what they were. The winds changed and blew bitter cold, and the hides and weaves of hair we clad ourselves in could not hold together against it, and hampered us when we walked, and trying to tie them together still left gaps that the wind cut through as freezing as ever. We warmed ourselves with the speed of the hunt, and with the cooking fires after, and with sleep wrapped in one another’s arms, and lamented that the heat of our own blood could be only so poorly trapped.

It was on one of these feasts that I found in my share a bone so hard that it seemed it would not split for the marrow no matter how hard I pounded it. But when I used my knife to try to pry it open instead, it slipped and broke of a shard of bone – long and narrow, and very sharp! That was how we made our first stone knives, from discovering which stones could chip at the edges of others. I am not sure what I was thinking at first, but I picked up the shard of bone and carved at it until it was fine and smooth, pointed at one end and notched at the other, and when I pierced the edge of my furs with it, it slipped through easily, all the way from tip to end – I saw the end vanish from one side of the fur as it emerged on the other, and all in a flash it seemed I could see the trail the movement of the bone left in the air, and how good it would be if that trail was solid, and not mere air!

But well, I wanted to show everyone at once, so I did not test it or tell of it first. I jumped up before the songs and storytelling could start and tore a handful of my hair out – it was even rarer then for the Noldor to have silver hair, and it caught the starlight most dangerously and inconveniently when I went hunting, but everyone around the fire could see it. I held up my wrap and tied my hair fast to the end of the bone, and wove it in and out – a simple and clumsy stitch, to be sure – until the edges of the fur that lay along my sides held together tight, with not a gap for the wind to bite through, and did not slip nor loosen, even when I held my arms over my head and spun and danced as fast as I might. Quite an uproar it was! Everyone was clamoring to lay hold of a bone, and plucking out each other’s hair, to try it themselves. These days we have thread, and woven cloth, and embroidering, and we say it is an art of women, and only fit for certain temperaments. But for many wheelings of the stars after that feast, every time we stopped to rest and eat, there was not a single elf who did not sit around the fire to sew. That at least, is one thing I am _quite_ glad to remind anyone of.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Requested on tumblr by the beautiful TheLionInMyBed: Yavanna + the prompt _"a drabble about a romance/their love life"_

“Hum, love life, you say? This is strange. One part of life is not separate from another. They may do different work, but that is an odd line to divide this work. But you are odd folk then, are you not? You take love in parts, I see.

There are differences in the ways of love that will do. You talk of Aulë, as you prefer to call him, my other. Hoom. Husband? That will do. Husband. A memory of I, and my husband. What you call memory is only things which have been, are they not? This is a difficulty, for now you see, we two are growing along and upon one another all the time as time goes on, a very long time, so it is like a story, as the world is like a story. We have roots, see! And the roots push against the soil, see? What would a piece of a root dug out of the earth tell you of a forest, hmm? I suppose you would not be satisfied with one flat little piece of a story that was dropped out of the sky in front of you without being connected up to the rest of it, any more than we the Ainur were. Ha, what’s that? You want one anyway? Well then!

Hold a moment! I remember now you whispering. You are interested in the part that was when my husband and I created incarnates as you. You are always so interested in things like yourself! Why is that? But I think you mistake us. It is not like, how shall I say it, like when your little Nenlë and Poikâ quarreled over how to plant their garden, and began to sabotage each other’s vegetable patches with plants that strangled the previous ones. Or _is_ it not like? No, I would say that perhaps to you, it _was_ just like that. You care about feelings before all, and our feelings in some ways were like theirs. But see, you think of your quarrels as disorder that has no good in it except to teach, and your quarreling couples must, what is the word, make up again? Hm! Then do you not see what new things come of your quarrels that would not have come otherwise? It is true that in the quarrels among the Valar, we do not always see what a quarrel has created until after it is over - and for some (like my dear brother!) it may take all the ages of the world - but to attempt to undo our own natures to bring about peace when we clash would be far worse a tangle than anything else, this we believe, and this we have seen. Now I had no notion of Ents until Aulë - hasty old slab! - made the Dwarves. How shall I regret a quarrel, when but for it I should not have made a part of the world? 

I do not intend to hm, “make up” with Aulë, I would not trade our natures’ quarrels for any peace of mind! Hasty little ones, you too will live forever - you must learn some patience to endure some things, some time in eternity!”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written [on tumblr](http://vardasvapors.tumblr.com/post/172931294714/fingolfin-nodus-tollens) for nyarnamaitar, for the prompt: Fingolfin + Nodus Tollens

_ Nodus Tollens: The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore. _

Here was the setting, here journey, here struggle and war that was foreseen to build, matched move for move, verse for verse. Far away was the time of old, where the tale began, a tale began but once. 

There was quarrel, there loss, there darkness, there frozen strait by dark of night, over sea and under sky, each feä on fell ice burning, each star in heaven shivering, blue flame arced from horizon to horizon high above and far below. And out of the dark sky beyond the sea the silver light of rising moon spilled down like springmelt bubbling, and out of the dark earth beyond the ice the petals unfurled like banners, and pollen released like trumpet calls, as blossoms sprang up in greeting. 

The Cuivienyar had passed down old tales from before the Great Journey, of entering the underworld and passing through to the Light beyond the Sea. He had imagination enough to turn the story back-to-front – it was a thing fair-wrought still. Through sorrow, to finding. His brother’s tongue had crafted words like jewels, as lasting and as true.

Now here fire poured out like blood, and tree and hill were torn to ash by the flames’ red hot teeth. Here field was felled and forest razed in the onslaught, with the crackling and roaring and rushing and whistling of an army, of a torrent of spears and swords, of cruel molten steel still glowing and flowing and formless in the forge-heat. The sun fell to earth and ravaged it amid endless night of black smoke, and in the darkness it flickered fierce gold like the light of betrayal across the sea.

When Hador was a youth he had written down a long and winding lay of the eastern lands of herding and wandering, and an errant chief who craved a fountain of undeath. He wrote it in a book separated by pages, so that if a handful were torn from any part of it the tale changed to horror by nothing but its very raggedness. We already have that problem my lord, he said when Fingolfin asked, for we forget, and must by ourselves stitch across the gap to remake it whole. Hador had not remembered how that lay ended and so in his old age he guessed the chief may have came back to his sheep and cattle and people in wisdom and in sorrowing. But in that tale the herd was not devoured in fire, and there was no enemy to challenge behind the veil of flames – that might have given that tale a different shape, by nothing but its very ending.


End file.
